One of the most striking novels I read as a kid was Marcia Davenport’s My Brother’s Keeper, based on the Collyer brothers (she named them Holt brothers). We who pile books around us for comfort and refuse to let go or organize have serious issues. Not all damaging, you see. They’re just issues. “Don’t you dare touch my copy of Ulysses-I got that when I was a freshman and I still need to read it!” Here’s the jacket description of My Brother’s Keeper, Cardinal paperback edition of 1956, as a warning:

“Under tons of rubbish, rat-infested and filthy, the police found the bodies of two enormously wealthy old men. Once they had been gay and talented men about town. Why did these two, who had everything, live out their lives as hermits in a nightmare of gruesome squalor?
The answer lay in the monstrous house – in diaries, sealed boxes and trunks filled with the rotting splendor of a woman’s clothes.”

I just LOVE this! I’ve been spotting lots of really cool bookshelf pictures around the blogosphere lately…
In my tiny Paris apartment, book storage is becoming something of a problem, too, so I enjoy seeing how resourceful other people are. (I occasionally write about books in a blog devoted to the arts in general and to Paris, and just yesterday, I asked readers if they prefer to store their bookw with their dust jackets or if they prefer them just naked, as I do!//mary-laure.blogspot.com/2008/01/naked-books.html)